Enjoyment? What if what this graph is measuring is how many people have given up?

I doubt the republicans enjoy any good news while Obama is president.

I am hardly a republican. The other people who aren't happy about the Jobs situation are the 11 million who had jobs in 2008 and who are facing very happy news about the stock market, but no happy news about Jobs.

This is a Jobless recovery Paul, and posting happy talk like this graph above is crap journalism. Examine the Federal Reserve graph I posted below and tell me how joyous the situation is. Read the Duke/Harvard Wealth inequality report I linked to. Take a look at the Bureau of Labor's long term forecast that predicts that job growth will be slower than the census prediction of population growth. You know what that means? EMRATIO will be flat to declining over the next decade, not recovering to pre 2008 levels.

Paul- examine the facts. The facts show the jobs situation is at best stagnant. We can debate why, but the facts are that we are not making progress.

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12 million people lost their jobs and this graph shows nothing about how those jobs have not come back, nor is there is any trend indicating anything other than job stagnation. Since those jobs are not returning, what does declining reports for unemployment benefits tell you.

That's right. Those 12 million people are giving up any hope of getting a job back.

Benen's graph is a measurement of despair, not progress.

The people who are happiest about the high unemployment numbers are industry, business and shareholders...It keeps wages down and profits up.

@John: This graph doesn't measure how many have given up, it measures how many lost their job and didn't immediately get a new one.

John

The reason that Steve only shows this particular graph is because it makes it look like spending money we don't have actually helps unemployment. Therefore making the President look good. That is the only thing that matters to Mr. Benen

That is nonsense and you know it. Look at the Fred graph I linked to. EMRatio demonstrates that the calamitous job shedding halted with the stimulus. Or do you think that L shape coinciding with the stimulus is just a big coincidence.

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But go right ahead posting this nonsense- the GOP clown show about the stimulus provides ample opportunity for levity at your expense. The party of the stupid goes on and on and on.

Can you come up with another reason for posting this particular graph week after week?

I would love to see actual numbers on how many people are unemployed, along with the numbers on the ones that quit looking and took welfare and social security disability.

All He keeps showing is the number of new claims. If businesses are down to a skeleton crew they think very seriously before laying people off. therefore the number of first time jobless claims falls.

Also It would be nice to see a chart on how much stimulus money ended up in the pockets of the evil 1%

Are you going to bother to respond to the stimulus's effect on the EMRATIO graph? Is all you have to offer ad hominem partisan finger pointing, or are you interested in actually thinking about the US Jobs situation?

There is no question that this is a jobless recovery.

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The long term problem is that as wealth is flowing dramatically to the 1%. Profits have not been shared equitably and it is starving the consumer economy. Market forces are driving domestic businesses to minimize labor costs through automation and outsourcing. This has the hidden long cost of starving demand, since purchasing power of consumers is being starved.

What I hear optimistic conservatives propose are fantasies about how new technology and innovation will create new jobs.

As a former manager from high tech industry, I've got some news for you:

High tech is not labor intensive. In fact, it is quite the opposite. So we have to look somewhere else for retaining purchasing power in consumer hands or the US consumption economy is doomed to further stagnation. Two ways to do that:

1. Tax code that redistributes Wealth.
2. Tax code that punishes domestic job destruction, and rewards job creation.

Take your pick. Your choice?

Boy oh boy is the BS deep this morning. I should have put on my hip waders!

Yet another contentless message from the representatives of the Stupid Party.

Bereft of facts or a logical argument.

Try again Marty. We know you can get out of the clown car and lend some help defend the US against the assault on the middle class. If you have a different solution, let's hear it, and let's hear the facts that back you up.

I'll take #2 but Obama won't. Back in 2007 He campaigned on that very platform but has done little of anything to resolve the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas. This problem started back in the 1990s with NAFTA and other trade agreements with Asia. China started manipulating their currency and the race to send production jobs away was on. I built plastic injection molds for Whirlpool,Hoover and Evenflo. All of those molds are built overseas now. We saw it coming as early as 1995. There is no way in hell that the government of the US will ever tax imports the way that other countries do to us because of lobbyists from the likes of Walmart etc. Automation has and always will be a problem for American workers But there is no reason to compound the problem with offshoring. Most people that were cranking a handle on a machine in the 90s are now welcoming people to Walmart for a quarter of the money they were pulling in as a machinist. The rest of us saw it coming and branched out to keep our standard of living.

Those people that did not retrain or find another way to make money are now on welfare and ss disability and I for one would like to see that number.

I agree #2 is where we get the bulk of the leverage. Let's face it, if you were a manager looking at the fabrication costs if you bought a machine or offshored the work, you'd make the same choices, anti-patriotic though they might be. It's not our job to maintain the economic health of the nation. It's your job to make your production group as efficient and profitable as you can. That is the dirty secret about offshoring- the math forces you to make the Romney decisions. Government can change that calculus without violating the principle of respecting market dynamism, and there is sound economic reasons for such intervention.

What we need to provide are tools for those managers to show his bosses why it is more profitable to hire more US workers, not less. Job Employment credits is one way we can incentivize all businesses to hire and retain workers rather than the alternative. This sounds a lot like job protectionism but I am making a different argument to support your objections about NAFTA. The promise of NAFTA and other trade agreements was that purchasing power would increase due to dramatically falling prices in consumer goods. Jobs in third world countries would increase their middle class, and thereby demand for our products. Everyone theoretically would win. The reality turned out different. The other side of it was that purchasing power is being attacked due to the reduced number and salaries for domestic jobs. That's what took our manufacturing jobs. Further, the promised consumption growth in third world countries has not risen anywhere near as what was hoped because companies in Mexico and China keep wages at poverty levels. There is no more incentive there to share wealth with the consumer classes as there is here. All incentives are on wealth extraction from those outside the 1%.

You have "branched out" but there aren't enough places for those 12 million people with lost jobs to employ them at the levels they once were. Managers in companies know what is happening and would like to make the right decision to help the US, but the cost benefit of hiring a US worker sucks, and the manager knows he will lose his job if he ignores what the spreadsheets tell him about profitability.

So there is a legitimate externality that doesn't show up in those spreadsheets. It's the decline in consumption of the companies profits due to starvation of US purchasing power. As companies lower US employment, that number goes down, but though abstractly every economist knows that is true, the company does not have anything that can directly measure that cost. This is where the government can make that cost perceptible. As the company's extracts more wealth from the US economy and returns less in the form of jobs, the government imposes confiscatory taxes on profits. Those businesses with low labor needs can buy employment credits (like Carbon credits) from corporations that are inherently labor intensive (USPS, various services).

An arms length institution like the Federal Reserve would regulate the issuance rate of employment credits. This would give the Fed a significant tool to fulfill their second mission they are often faulted on: employment. Control of the value of employment credits is a regulatory strategy analogous to how regulating the money to fulfill their other mission- controlling the relationship between inflation and economic exuberance.

Regarding #1, I do support some of this through spending on education and research. There are statistically demonstrable economic multiplier effects from government hiring in education at research. So on #1, I would propose nationalizing the funding of public school education, and returning teacher student levels to 24 to 1, with pre-2nd grade at something closer to 18 to one. As far as research goes, there are tons of lucrative technologies in neuroscience, nanotech, genetic engineering and applications of quantum physics that are too disconnected from near term profits that private businesses are starving them of capital. It's good national strategy to keep investment in those areas. At best, our current efforts are anemic. We need to be aggressive investors. Besides the returns due to new lucrative products, the research is a magnet for global talent.

But there is a limit to that- we could claw back all 12 million jobs with government employment, but I suspect you and I agree we don't want to do that with government make work type jobs. Nor do we want to do it by incentivizing weakening of the US work ethic. I think conservatives would find surprising is that most of the 47% are on the same page on that. The lowest paying jobs should at least provide a better than poverty level wage. Sure, people should have incentive to get a better job, but if the lowest paying jobs can't keep the children fed, this does not keep the consumer economy healthy- it is starving it of cash needed to sustain it.

This is not magical. This is a matter of getting more plates spinning on rods. The plates spinning is the cash supply running through the system. The more plates a proprietor gets going, his profit percentage is the same, but the slice of the pie is bigger because the cash flow is bigger. The more plates spinning, the more he needs to hire workers who in turn spin more.

It's a positive feedback loop we can get back to, but we have got to figure out a way to fix that managerial spreadsheet so that it accurately can account for the devastating hidden cost that is killing consumption in the US- the incentive to cannibalize middle class jobs.

Truth be told, I am for mechanisms that rely on the dynamism of market forces, and it is about the only common ground I have with neoliberals and traditional classical economists. There is no market incentive for profit sharing.

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We need to have something like a carbon credit for employment. Sure we should be employing many more teachers and researchers- the multiplied economic payback from those activities makes that hiring a no brainer. But it is insufficient volume to get us back to 2008 levels. And it is not just numbers of jobs, but the salaries from those jobs that has to increase.

That's why incentivizing job growth has to apply to all businesses- not just the cherry picked small bore policy proposals the administration has floated. Like Carbon credits, an Employment credit would be generated at a surplus rate by some industries and not others. The ability to buy and sell employment credits in order to avoid profit confiscatory taxation means that non labor intensive industries are not penalized, and labor intensive industries are rewarded for their role in keeping the consumer economy supplied with cash to keep the consumption cycle healthy.

I totally relate, jamminsue. That scenario is being played out all across America, me included. I failed because at my age I wasn't willing to take on the now-standard expectation of school loans, even when I realized that part time work around classes wouldn't even begin to cover ever-rising living expenses and school tuition.

So many doors have slammed shut on the American dream. We citizens are paying an egregious price for Congress to play their games of patty cake with the President.

jamminsue: Being in school does not disqualify one for unemployment benefits so long as you are still "available for work." That is to say, if you would be willing to accept a job that pays at least 90% of what you last made, you are considered eligible. When I was laid off of work, I was making 85k. Because I subsequently went to school to get a teaching certification, there was no risk of anyone offering me a job that paid 90% of my old salary. When asked by the state if I would accept a job making that, I could honestly say yes. I *was* available for such a job, if offered, but I knew nobody would offer it to me.